Pretty Flowers

Garden Girl told me very early on in the year that she wanted some pretty flowers in the garden. She loves growing vegetables but equally loves anything pretty and our garden does lack flowers, so I readily agreed to a visit to the garden centre last week to buy some. We went for a swim first, grabbing a sausage roll for a quick lunch. The intention then was to nip into our local garden centre, choose some flowers and head home to plant them. However when we arrived at the garden centre there was a host of easter activities and we ended up staying for the whole afternoon.

We searched for golden bunnies, decorated plant pots, sowed seeds and had faces painted. We only had to pay a minimal fee for the face paints and half of this went to a charity, but the activities were well equipped and well organised so I was really impressed. However, I was a little bit disappointed when the staff offered a choice of seeds for the children. Garden Girl chose poppies which was fine, but Garden Boy picked up a packet of Mung beans. I asked how we should treat them once they had germinated and they were unable to tell us. As far as I was aware Mung beans are used for sprouting and I have no idea how to grow a Mung Bean plant in compost. I was handed the seed packet which only gave instructions on how to sprout them so I left with no further knowledge. What really disappointed me however, was not that they couldn't tell me what to do with the plant but that they actually said 'Well, it doesn't matter. You probably don't want to actually grow them anyway.'

Hmmm.Seriously? Garden Boy will be sooooooo disappointed if Garden Girl's poppies grow and his mung beans don't even pop up above the compost. And why would you organise a childrens activity that encourages growing things if you don't expect them to go ahead and grow them? That said, all three of our Little Garden Helpers had a fabulous afternoon at the garden centre and I will now be looking out for future activities held there, not least because they make delicious cakes in the cafe and we stayed long enough to require extra sustenance!

And we did remember to buy the flowers we went for in the first place and although we ran out of time to plant them that day I made them a priority the following day. By June there will be some lovely petunia's and impatiens of various colours decorating the border of our apple tree bed and presumably a happy smile on Garden Girl's face whenever she sees them!